[536] The fishermen of Blankeness, on the Elbe, and the sailors of the Levant, and in various other places, still navigate in shares for wages.
[537] This article affords some evidence that these laws were drawn up in France for French sailors.
[538] Pardessus refers to an unedited Rhodian Law, as having suggested this article, p. 337.
[539] It was further ordained, that the wines on board the ship should be sold at the price customary at the place to which she had come.
[540] It has been shown by Pardessus and others that these so-called “Rhodian Laws” are a compilation of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and distinct from the one famous Rhodian Law whose title, “De Jactu,” has been preserved.
[541] Pardessus retains this form of the word, but the MSS. read “lodman” (i.e. leading-man, pilot), which is probably the true form.—See Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 7965, fol. 89, &c.
[542] A French law, so late as Aug. 22, 1790, sent a pilot to the galleys for three years who accidentally lost his vessel; and sentenced him to death if he did so wilfully.—Pardessus, p. 341.
[543] These and the following Articles, which, doubtless, faithfully represent the manners of the times, are found in early editions of Garcia and Cleirac, but not in the MSS.—Pardessus, p. 346, note 3.
[544] “Kenning” is a very ancient word in sea language. It means view, or course, “course by course,” and was employed when navigation was performed by views and by observation from one land to another, prior to the use of the compass. Admiral W. H. Smyth, in his “Sailor’s Word Book,” states that “it was a mode of increasing wages formerly, according to whaling law, by seeing how a man performed his duty.”
[545] For notice of whales caught so far south as Biarritz, see “Syllabus of Rymer’s Fœdera,” [Appendix No. 8, p. 648, s. a. 1338].